1&1 BLOG

Every once in a while, no matter how devoured by the daily dynamics of software development we get, we feel the need to turn to the present, to the communities around us. In the end this is where all those belonging to the big 1&1 Romania team come from, right? And if that is the case, wouldn’t it be ok to scan and scrutinize time and ask ourselves who our future colleagues are; who are those who may come work along our side in a few years?

Together with Scoala de Valori, 1&1 Romania has asked itself this very question. And they joined forces in starting an initiative that would target teenagers with a passion for software development.

An old saying states that “Good things come to those who wait”. Well, with all due respect to popular wisdom, this Winterfest edition taught us that better things come to those who ACT!

If I were to flashback to when it all started, the following memories invade my head. Adrian F., head of Access Development Romania Team gathers us in the small, familiar, 406 room for an ad-hoc meeting. Team rounds up, door gets closed, everybody still on their feet and then the news comes: “Guys, this year we will be responsible for organizing the Winterfest party in 1&1. What do you think?”. Judging by facial expression, a mix of curiosity, anxiousness, uncertainty and excitement filled the atmosphere. As with any change that impacts daily routine, people approach it with caution at first. But even though we were not sure how to do this, what exactly will happen and if we’ll pull it through, we figured out this was a nice time to jump-in and start paddling. So everybody committed to this.

One of our interns speaks about his internship with 1&1 Internet Romania and how this experience helped him learn how things work inside big companies.

The 1&1 Internship Program was probably the best work experience I’ve ever had. Studying at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology, I’ve always wanted to get in touch with a great company and learn how things work inside. At 1&1 I had the opportunity to find out many interesting things about different topics regarding software development and testing procedures.

Brush up QATRO résumé. The quality assurance technology department from Romania, also labeled as QATRO, represents the team in charge with testing mainly the internal software products of the 1&1 organization and spearheading the quality assurance process within the Technology & Architecture division.

In brief, the products targeted by QATRO are mostly described as being J2EE based tools and applications which focus on optimizing the 1&1 internal workflow management, as a solution to the growing needs of the organization. Some of the best examples are:

But there’s more to success then just acknowledging a statement. Management evangelists Jim Collins, Morten T. Hansen conducted extensive research on businesses facing chaotic situations and came up with a set of core behaviors that are practiced with perseverance throughout success stories. The behaviors are shown below in the pyramid of core behaviors.

Let’s take a look at what these behaviors mean from the business point of view and also sketch some implementation strategies for them.

The past few years have taught business owners everywhere that predictability is a thing of the past. Whether they learned it the hard way, or were among the survivors of repeated turmoil, everybody from team members to CEOs is aware that uncertainty is the new “normality” and world class researchers already recognized the “chaotic” economic model as the status quo.

Reasons that led to this reality include globalization, the unprecedented expansion of the Internet and other networks and the lightning speed at which information spreads, as a direct consequence of permanent connectivity. Today’s bleeding-edge technology is mainstream by tomorrow, only to become obsolete just as fast and maintaining a competitive advantage is harder than ever.

This is how the event started and this is what we’re expecting for its outcome!

Long history short…

The Ship It Day concept has been designed by Atlassian to give its employees the chance to work on anything that relates to the company products and deliver it during the 24 hours of the event. This came from the necessity of fostering the creativity, proving a different opinion, moving faster and increasing the work environment attractiveness.

Hmmm… seems familiar… and even more, we’re thinking that it also helps strengthening the teams and increasing the quality of the collaboration.

You find it hard to follow up with your responsibilities? Having problems organizing your daily tasks? Your memory is not always helping you? Not anymore!

Whether you’re familiar or not with the Agile methodologies, Kanban can (and will) help you sort, prioritize and organize each of your responsibilities.

All you have to do is to create an account here and then start configuring your own board. It’s up to you to choose the appropriate approach. You can use one for yourself or you can share a board with your colleagues from the dedicated team.

This article is a guest post written by Alex, an Independent IT QA Consultant, with over 6 years of experience, specialized in infrastructure, telecom, defense and security.

Having been previously exposed to the Test Driven Development (TDD) practices at the beginning of my career in IT QA, the ancestor of current BDD practices, I have had a first-hand experience with the ups and downs arising from a poorly managed requirements development process and learned not to put expectations very high in regards to initial system architecture at a certain scale.